These associated lyrics (from 1968 at the end of the roaring sixties) will certainly let many alarm bells ring when Paul McCartney will pass the check point prior to his opening performance of the 2012 Olympics Games in London. Automated surveillance systems now massively used to prevent any unrest during the London Olympics also checking out this humble WordPress blog – are unintelligent and will just gather that there is a pattern of ‘adjacent words’ with a recurring frequency of the terms:

M16 and Scotland Yard on-line surveyors vetting each person entering the Olympic perimeters, will rush to their screens alarmed by the perfect Big Brother System – operational and tested already for months – and in the embedded earphones of the female constable’s hat, a voice will say…. “take this man apart for questioning.”

And…, of course there will be excuses afterward and an embarrassed smile, when human intelligence will have been applied. “Please Sir McCartney, come and join the opening ceremony, there never has been any harm in your songs, … excuse us for those stupid machines.”

There is no doubting that police and security will be faced with demanding challenges during the London Olympics. Nevertheless, infringements on basic civil liberties like the right to free speech and peaceful protest are not the solution to a secure Games. It would also be completely contrary to the spirit of the Olympics for 2012 to become an excuse for mass surveillance and loss of liberties. What a shameful legacy for London 2012 that would be.

The remark about “the spirit of the Olympics 2012” in London and how state surveillance would be contrary to the original intentions of the Olympic Games, points to an implicit positive enlightening view of the history of the Olympic Games, that is widely found. It is surprising that even serious people, like those of the ‘Liberty’ organisation, stick to the idealised vision of international brother- and sisterhood with the emphasis not on winning but on competing in a good manner, thus promoting international understanding and peace. In the words of the founder of the movement Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937):

L’important dans la vie ce n’est point le triomphe, mais le combat, l’essentiel ce n’est pas d’avoir vaincu mais de s’être bien battu. (The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.)

Coubertin’s view of the origin of the Olympic Games was highly idealised and selective in his historic references. He created of course a new concept and with it the myth of the peaceful fair play internationalism. As always with a good myth, it is not just fantasy, there are some historical relevant elements in it, be it that there is no serious search for the original context of these ‘elements’. Nigel Spivey of the University of Cambridge did seven years ago a serious attempt to re-contextualise the Olympic Myth in his book “The Ancient Olympics: War Minus the Shooting”, published by Oxford University Press and with several pages on-line available at Amazon.co.uk or at GoogleBooks, this worldcat.org link tells you in which nearby library you can his book. The summary of the book makes clear that it may be a good read for this summer of the London 2012 Olympics:

The word “athletics” is derived from the Greek verb “to struggle or to suffer for a prize.” As Nigel Spivey reveals in this engaging account of the Olympics in ancient Greece, “suffer” is putting it mildly. Indeed, the Olympics were not so much a graceful display of Greek beauty as a war fought by other means. Nigel Spivey paints a portrait of the Greek Olympics as they really were–fierce contexts between bitter rivals, in which victors won kudos and rewards, and losers faced scorn and even assault. Victory was almost worth dying for, the author notes, and a number of athletes did just that. Many more resorted to cheating and bribery. Contested always bitterly and often bloodily, the ancient Olympics were no an idealistic celebration of unity, but a clash of military powers in an arena not far removed from the battlefield. The author explores what the events were, the rules for competitors, training and diet, the pervasiveness of cheating and bribery, the prizes on offer, the exclusion of “barbarians,” and protocols on pederasty. He also peels back the mythology surrounding the games today and investigates where our current conception of the Olympics has come from and how the Greek notions of beauty and competitiveness have influenced our modern culture.”

There are several editions of the book with differing covers. I like this cover the best. It appears in a critical review in the magazine World Archeology; c;ick cover image to go to the review…

A nice sunday with lots of sun and people enjoying the outside calm of town, or letting some of the outside world in through opening their windows, should be a peaceful and enjoyable thing, where it not for the endemic (*) Buzz Bikers driving their purposely loudest possible roaring motorbikes (**) through the inner town – especially – to ventilate themselves and their ego’s.

My mind game is imagining the BuzzSwat in action, applied with the same mercy urbanised humans tend to have for an annoying buzz-fly: SWATTT!

The local police is invisible – seems to enjoy football matches on television in their stations – and something like an ‘Anti-Bikers-Buzz-Squat’ has never been thought of in this permissive city, once home of the bicycle-beer-café with peddling drunken tourists having a good drink and shout (***). Bikers, also, can freely van their egos around here in Amsterdam.

This message will also be send to our burgomaster who is the first mayor of this town in decades who shows some – hesitant – concern of how “his” city sounds…

We do have all the technology needed to pick these ‘guys’ (no noisy girls on bikes as far as I can see, some but only on the back seat) from the road: sound sensors, fast cameras, helicopters, name it. I am not a biker so I do not know if these bikes have one or modes of operation, within the official noise limit, and outside these limits. If the exhaust system of these bikes have been tampered with, a kind of ‘art of noise’ tuning, to produce maximum effect, the motorbikes are in an illegal state and should be taken off the road on the spot. If the noise production can be hidden at one moment and still be produced at another, a combined system of instant sound and image capture could be used, to collect the needed proof for prosecution and seizure.

I think it will be necessary to also check the motorbike trade for selling and altering such “leisure” products. Motorbikes purposely made noisy, that has no other sense than produce the joy some people must feel, to terrorise their fellow citizens, by temporarily possessing the space and time that is shared with others with the noise they make.

The BUZZ Bikers are criminals stealing the civility of public space.

The poetics of noise, a picture I made March 11. posted on my Facebook page (seems to have vanished there thanks mr. Zucker…) this year when we had a few days of softer weather announcing a spring that was – in hindsight – slow to come. First nice sunday of the year… forget about listening to the birds, “roarrrrr” the bikers take their monsters out for a ride.

Picture I made May 22. when we had a first nice summer temperature evening… and it was spoiled by a constant parade of these motor devils… (posted on that day on The Limping Messenger)

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(*) Endemic (as in “disease”) n. : a disease that is constantly present to a greater or lesser degree in people of a certain class or in people living in a particular location

(**) The police of the city of Amsterdam do have special actions and brigades against the disturbance of young scooter drivers, being both a danger because of wild driving and a nuisance because of the noise produced. Also scooters are so high on the wish-list of youngsters that the ones that are not fortunate enough, will steal them. I have witnessed these squads several times and noticed that especially young Moroccan guys were singled out as they seem to excel in breaching a few laws while driving these fancy scooters (though a xenophobic bias can be not excluded at the same time). I asked an officer of such a squad once why they did not also target the noise of the more affluent big motorbike drivers and the hellish noise they produce, as well as super high speed traversing through the inner town, often passing several police stations without any counter action. I was told, that this was “not a priority.”

(***) After years of complaints, beer-bike-cafés have been – almost – forbidden since after a whole series of court cases. The discussion was whether or not a bicycle-beer-bar was still a bicycle or not. A court decided that the maximum width of a bicycle or tricycle was 1,50 meter. Most of the versions going around where more than this measure limit, though inventive entrepreneurs did develop a beer-cycle-bar that stays within the law-limit.

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(1) European Parliament 2012/2/2: “Sport: EU tackles hooligans, corrupt agents and illegal betting.” Five issues in one resolution: Promote sport for girls; – Blacklist hooligans; – Make doping a criminal offence; – Regulate sport agents; -Combine learning and training.
“Blacklist hooligans – Parliament asks that supporters who are known to be violent or to engage in discriminatory behaviour be banned from all European stadiums. A European data base should enable national authorities to ensure that the ban applies to any international matches played on their territory. MEPs also call on Member States and sports governing bodies to commit to tackling homophobia and racism against athletes.”

(2) The Guardian 2010/06/17 Rupert Meyers: “Football banning orders are out of control Our draconian anti-hooliganism legislation unfairly infringes the free movement of football supporters”

(4) Reuters 2012/02/03: “Football fans in one German state may have to pass through “face scanners” at stadiums, according to interior ministry proposals designed to eradicate hooliganism.”

(5) The Football Forum 2009/1/13: “Police to target hooligans with fingerprint scanners.” Football Supporters’ Federation fears its use may cause problems for law-abiding fans. A spokesman said: “As far as we’re concerned, football fans should be policed on their behaviour, not their reputation.”

‎”Ultrasone geluiden kunnen mannen onvruchtbaar maken” (Utrasone sound can make men infertile) is a belated news article in a Dutch daily today, as the news item dates back to the year 2010. The research is financed by the Bill Gates foundation with the idea that it might be a tool to make men temporarily infertile for 6 month or so by directing ultrasound to their scrotum. A research till now on rats in labs, but we know that lots of people like to experiment with the sound limits and pleasures of their bodies in the laboratory of the discotheque.

Ultrasound scan are a must nowadays, no pregnancy without a video-photograph of the unborn, though recently unnecessary fun scans for inpatient parents are under debate. There is even a CD (UltraSound – Music for the Unborn Child) to let your child listen to music before it is born still on sale at Amazon with Debussy, Bach, Schubert and Chopin… The news item made me think, how come that ultrasound is used so often and even propagated on the one hand, while on the other it restricts and even stops male sperm production and may harm the fetus.

If my association of ultrasound in discotheques and other spaces with ultra loud music for leisure with bodily harm and specifically fertility and unborn babies, has any ground in science, I could not yet find out. The association remains, nevertheless.

In a visual narrative scroll “Orbis Digitalium Pictus” I made a few years ago for an international theatre science congress ‘Orbis Pictus – Theatrum Mundi’ there is a small section on ultrasound, a way of visualisation known to me also directly in circumstances that were properly diagnostic. Likewise I have had the “pleasure” to be examined with such a sonar device as well, because ultrasound certainly is not just a ladies thing. In its origin it comes from industrial testing of materials and has had over half a century now of being applied in medicine.

新的一年大爆炸的奢侈品是傳統的中國火藥的發明 (luxury of new year big bangs is the legacy of the invention of Chinese gunpowder)

The Netherlands is part of what can be called ‘the European war-exempted-zone’. Firework is a popular craze here from 10 in the morning December 31 to 2 at night January 1, to drive out the old year. 60 to 70 million Euro value of explosives goes up in the air, 200 to 300 eye operation as a result, 20 to 30 blind, hardly any dead. Many youngsters do test their ammunition before hand, especially near my house next top a night outgoing district. Most of the Dutch have no direct war or terrorism connotation when they here a big bang nearby in these last days of the year, though the Party for the Animals and Green Left have called for a total ban on private/personal firework use.

Firework sales for New Years Eve in the Netherlands in 1959 as I remember it as a boy counting all the pocket money I have saved and scanning the window of the only shop or so in town for my acquisitions. My parents knew the sound of real big bangs and my mother told me how she stand on the balcony of her house in The Hague and patting my back to make me not afraid of the bangs and billowing smoke at the horizon: the big mistake of a RAF bombardment hitting a civilian quarter (Bezuiden Hout) of The Hague right opposite the home of my grand mother. I was just a baby so can not remember it. I did play in the ruins - left for a decade or so - as a kid when staying with my grand mother... she did not appreciate much my rejoicing of "the ban bangs"...

Enjoying explosives is a real LUXURY as can be learned from the United Nations bulletin ‘ExplosiveWeapons.info’ published by the United Nations Disarmament Research Institute in Geneva. The “End of Year Explosive Violence Review” is summing it up: “Sadly, in over 70 countries, explosive weapons have caused severe harm to individuals and communities and furthered suffering by damaging vital infrastructure. But recognition is growing that the use of explosive weapons in places where civilians live, work or gather constitutes a serious humanitarian problem that needs to be addressed.”

Not only in the Netherlands, there are initiatives to come to a ban on firework as a citizen’s demand, in all parts of the world similar initiatives have been taken, Philippines, New Zealand, Great Britain, South Africa, Italy, the United States, which can be read about in detail on the web site of stop-fireworks.org, Some initiatives propose alternative forms of New Year celebration like in the USA to bang drums instead of firing explosives…

Fireworks in the Binnen Bantammerstraat part of the then still tiny Chinese Quarter of Amsterdam in the winter of 1971-72, a photograph by Koen Wessing (1942-2011).

When living in Amsterdam in the early seventies next to the small Chinese quarter, still growing at that time around the Binnen Bantammerstraat, there was always a big display of Chinese fireworks by the restaurant holders in that street on Western calendar New Years Eve. The Chinese had these long rolls of big firecrackers, one after another, we called them ‘pakora’s’, sometimes hung from the top of the house fronts or all along the street, twelve and more meter long. There was also the swaying around of firework on ropes within a dense circle in a crowd of people, the first ranks shrieking back each time a mass of glowing and sputtering ‘saltpeter’ passed their faces. The next morning the whole Chinese area looked like covered with a deep soft red carpet, with eager youngsters rummaging around to fire the ones that failed to explode during midnight. We had a squatted neighbourhood action centre straight next to this scene and always did throw new year midnight parties there. The photographer of this picture Koen Wessing was one of the supporters of our action group and it was only today I discovered this photograph by him, while doing a little research for this article.

The first part of this year I lived and worked for half a year in Hong Kong and on the first day of Chinese New year I was waiting for a massive popular display of fire work in my neighbourhood close to the popular district of Shek Kip Mei in Kowloon. To my surprise nothing happened at all, the only fireworks visible were the ones on the television set. The city panorama below my apartment – situated on a rock with a wide view – remained completely empty. It was only later I learned that all firework in the then Crown Colony of Hong Kong of the Brits had been forbidden in 1967, a year that almost saw a Cultural Revolution Rising in Hong Kong by local Maoists. Gunpowder of firework had been used in that turbulent year to make street bombs that would be exploded to raise the level of unrest in the city. That firework ban has remained in force ever since, with only some exceptions for the inhabitants of Hong Kong’s New territories villages during their special traditional spring and summer festivals.

A labour dispute at a factory making artificial plastic flowers in San Po Kong, Kowloon was the event triggering the 1967 Hong Kong rising; production output levels being raised for the same wage; breakdown hours of machines as non paid work time and so on...The picture taken May 11 1967 shows police forces firing tear gas grenades and wooden bullets at demonstrators assembling in front of the high rise factory building. Objects had been dropped on some police men before from the rooftops. A young boy later was beaten up and died.

When studying more of the history of the conflict in 1967 (“Hong Kong’s watershed: the 1967 riots” by Gary Ka-wai Cheung; 2009) I learned that some of those street bombs had warning signs on them (like “compatriots do not come close”) when planted, but the message was written in Chinese characters only. Most of these bombs were primitive home-made contraptions on the basis of gunpowder taken from firework stock (others used gunpowder used by fishermen). Firework bombs were most often thrown directly at colonial targets, mostly police stations and of the ones planted in the street many were fake bomb, just to “fire” social unrest. During almost a year 8352 suspected bombs had been planted of which only 1420 proved to be “genuine”, 1167 targeted the colonial police force, 253 were detonated in an uncontrolled way. The bombs hailed by the underground Maoist Communist Party of Hong Kong as a form of “People’s Warfare” could not fail to also hit ‘the people’ themselves and when in August 1967 a street bomb killed an eight year girl and a two year old boy, the public reaction backfired at the anti-colonial insurgents. An existing relative sympathy under broad layers of the population for the cause of these left wing revolutionaries fighting the colonial power, was progressively lost. The disruption of the daily life in the colony by the firework bombs -which were in a military sense minor weapons – had been significant. Hindering traffic and most of all having a psychological impact. At a certain moment during that year the British governor even worked secretly on a new emergency evacuation plan, for the non Chinese population, just in case. In the end it proved that the local underground Communist Party had for a great deal acted on their own and failed to generated the needed support from party authorities in Bejing. Mainland China was – at that time – too much in a political turmoil with lots of fractional infighting, to allow itself to take the small Colony of Hong Kong by force. Neo-colonial Hong Kong, “the goose with the golden eggs” was of more importance to the Mainland China than a banking, manufacturing and trading centre, which would certainly collapse after a forceful take-over.

Till this very day, the firework bombs remain a legacy associated with the Communist Party of Hong Kong, that, though not formally part of the restraint political landscape of Hong Kong (see “Underground front: the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong” by Christine Loh; 2010), is the central force of power in what is now The ‘Special Administrative Region of China Hong Kong’ (SAR Hong Kong). The highest governmental functions in SAR Hong Kong are reserved for (secret) Communist Party members only. As the history of this central core of Hong Kong power remains covered in secretive haze, debatable events in its history remain a subject which is mostly avoided. Who – for instance – visits the Hong Kong Historical Museum will find just one or two photographs of the 1967 struggle with a superficial caption. In popular memory though, the firework bombs and the effects of some indiscriminate targeting of the primitive firework bombs from 1967, lingers on.

A painted silk flag from the 10th century in China showing gunpowder used as a weapon on the end of a sort of spear gun.

Saltpeter (potassium nitrate) is a substance that forms through the decomposition of organic materials, a whitish salt like material since long known for its quality of burning fiercely even in non favourite circumstances for fire. We know that Taoist alchemists in China were experimenting with it already in the 8th century in their quest for life prolonging elixirs. While trying out all kind of combinations of substances and materials, they discovered the explosive properties of mixing saltpeter with sulphur and charcoal. The mix we call now in English ‘gunpowder’ (‘buskruit’ in Dutch *). Aside from try-outs to swallow small quantities as a medicine, the aesthetic and ceremonial qualities of the substance were discovered and all kind of ways to fire it for spectacular display were developed. Spring, Autumn and New Year festivals with their staged dances of mythical animals like dragons and lions, were amplified with display of fireworks. Bamboo tubes were used at first, which lead also to experiments to use the explosive mix for war purposes. First devices were spears with at the end bamboo tubes filled with gunpowder that were directed at an enemy during a battle. Soon more elaborate war use was found by finding out the propulsive qualities of certain mixes that could drive out one or more arrows from wooden containers. Closing up such bamboo containers would give yet another effect of bursting wood fibre and so also what we call now a grenade, has been invented over one thousand years ago.

Healing, celebration and warfare all used the same substance: gunpowder. Moments of celebration punctuated by explosions, but also new powerful bangs of explosions on the battlefield, which before was less loud with just clanging of lances, swords, shields and the shouts of warriors. Up to this very day the awe of a big bang may be just a carrier of celebration, but once someone has witnessed an explosion as a part of an act of terrorism or war, the aesthetic appreciation of a firework spectacle may be lost – for her or him – forever.